Today we rolled out a full redesign of the hosted ebook landing pages to help elevate the promotion of Premium Member hosted reports and sponsored buyers guides and boost landing page conversion to generate more downloads.

• View Premium Member hosted reports library
• View Sponsored Buyer's Guide library

Today we rolled out two new features to allow Premium Members to add extra product-level branding for branded profile banners and logos.

• Custom Product Banners (available w/all Premium Plans): Make your profiles catch the attention of visitors faster to more effectively market your products and boost conversion by replacing your company's generic branded banner with custom product specific profile banners
• Custom Product Logos (available w/Gold & Platinum Plans): Additional branding to enable more precise marketing of subsidiaries or sub-brands that are housed under the same umbrella/parent company 

Several companies have requested an easier way to view, manage and update partner recommendations via the vendor dashboard which is why HTR just rolled out a new dedicated tab within the vendor dashboard where you can: 

• View which partners have left you a recommendation
• View recommendation details
• Recommend your partner back
• Filter by product to see product-specific recommendations
• Update partner recommendations with 1-click to get them to count as fresh (similar to review updating)

Today we rolled out a redesign of the pricing tab within the profile editor based on feedback from both sides of the community (hoteliers and vendors).  Complete the pricing section for each of your products to help pique buyer interest to convert into a price quote and for a quick boost to your HT Score.

TL;DR

• For Hoteliers.  One of the most commonly requested pieces of information that hoteliers ask for most is pricing.  Hoteliers constantly reach out asking if we can obtain relative pricing benchmarks to help them better understand which products fit their budget and how they benchmark relative to each other
• For Vendors.  On the other hand, the feedback that we've gotten from most vendors is that they want pricing discretion and don't necessarily want their pricing publicly available (as evidenced by most vendors not having pricing on their websites...).  This pricing UI update allows vendors to report an estimated price range (without any add-on modules or integration fees) for benchmarking purposes while also maintaining pricing discretion (by not having to publicly state a specific price or number)
• Our Solution.  We created a way for vendors to share a rough pricing estimate for their base product for a single 100-room hotel (with no add-ons or integration fees) and then we benchmark this relative to other vendors in the category without disclosing pricing publicly
• Impact on Rankings.  Pricing information continues to be part of the profile completeness HT Score variable and does impact rankings the same as it always has so it's important to make sure to fill in this section of the profile editor to make sure you don't lose points or have any negative impact to your rankings

Since the rollout of Instant Connect last year, the majority of vendors on the platform have migrated to accepting leads in real-time based on targeting criteria reducing their time-to-followup and cutting their CPL in half.  With vendors now migrated to the Instant Connect system, we've had several requests for the ability to automatically decline leads that don't match your criteria which is why today we're rolling out the new Auto-Decline feature.  Here's how it works:

1. Enable Instant Connect in a category and set your targeting criteria
2. Scroll to the bottom of the settings 
3. Select 'yes' if you would like to automatically decline leads that do not match your targeting criteria. 

A couple things to note:

1. Once you enable auto-decline, you'll no longer get notifications about leads that don't match your lead targeting criteria
2. Once you decline a lead you won't be able to go back and change your mind (so make sure to only auto-decline segments that you absolutely cannot service)

Today HTR rolled out a full redesign of the Reputation Report Card aimed at making it simpler to identify how each of your products scores along each of the four facets of the ranking algorithm (eg. customer ratings, partner ecosystem, customer centricity and staying power).

• Drill into each section of the HT Score in more detail
• Understand each of the drivers of the HT Score ranking algorithm
• Highlight opportunities for improvement in real time to optimize your rankings and visibility

If you've competed in the HotelTechAwards in the past, this year is going to be nearly identical to last year.  Having said, that, there are a couple of updates and improvements that we've made this year that are worth noting that fall into three buckets: 

1. New Perks: Thousands of dollars in perks and benefits for participants to help make running your awards campaign a breeze.
2. Product Updates: New features that we've rolled out to simplify managing your team's awards campaign
3. Algorithm Updates: Updates to the HT Score ranking algorithm since last year to make the HT Score more dynamic that impact this year's competition.

I. New Perk for Participants: Free Case Studies During the Month of October

As in past year's all companies who compete in the annual HotelTechAwards get free access to the Automated Review Manager for 30-days (September 1 - September 30) to kick start your campaign.  This year we are also going to be adding a new perk worth thousands of dollars which is that all participants will now get 10x free case studies ($5,000 value) to utilize during the month of October.   We will be sending out a reminder notification about this in October but for those of you who like to plan ahead...plan on focusing on posting case studies in October. How it works: 

1. Post a case study during the month of October
2. Once it has been verified, fill in the refund form here by October 30, 2024 to get up to 10x case studies refunded in full 

II. Relevant Product Updates

1. Redesigned Reputation Report Card: Ground up redesign of the Reputation Report Card to make it easier than ever to see what will make the most impact and move the needle most to optimize your HT Score and focus your awards campaign on the action items that set your company up for success.
2. Company-Level Integrations: Integrations have been refactored from the product to company level making it easier to list and verify your integrations without having to relist or audit duplicate integrations for each of your products.
3. Partner Recommendations Tab + Updating Feature: In order for companies to more easily manage, collect and update recommendations from partners, HTR will be rolling out a tab in the dashboard dedicated to partner recommendations (instead of the small report card modal from past years)

III. HT Score & Rankings

1. Profile Completeness Variable: The profile completeness score will evaluate each profile along with pieces of key information that buyers look for which include: capabilities, screenshots, pricing, features, profile freshness.
2. Trending Variable:  The purpose of the trending score is to help hoteliers identify products that are trending in the market which is measured by assessing the following questions.
3. Static Variables Update: All HT Score variables migrated from static (cumulative over time) to dynamic (time-based variables and calculations to enhance relevance and weight recent content more heavily)

Reminder: For companies who are looking to compete in the overall platform awards, please rememeber that you do not need to register seperately for this competition BUT YOU DO NEED TO BE REGISTERED AND COMPETING IN EACH OF YOUR RESPECTIVE PRODUCT CATEGORIES.

Back in 2021 HTR implemented an update to decay the category review threshold over time (view update) to make this variable more dynamic and gradual (vs binary) in order to weight reviews left more recently as more relevant.  

Over the past several years HTR rolled out new variables including Partner Recommendations, Case Studies, Profile Completeness and the Trending Score which have to date been static (aka. cumulative over time) meaning that for example a partner recommendation or case study created today was viewed no differently that one left 5-years ago.  As such, HTR is going to be implementing the same decay factor that the category review threshold received back in 2021 to each of these variables in August '23 to make them more relevant and dynamic.

Who will be impacted?

Companies who have been idle on HTR without recent hotelier or partner recommendations, information requests, press mentions, etc. 

What can you do to mitigate the impact?

Make sure that your company has not been idle for more than 6-months on HTR with no recent content (ie. hotelier reviews, partner recommendations, case studies, lead requests, press releases, etc).  Please check your Reputation Report Card for more specific instructions and priorities for your company.

The HTScore Algorithm takes into account over a dozen variables which analyze and recalculate daily based on millions of unique data points.  The HT Score algorithm alone runs more than 3,000+ lines of code which is run daily which runs thousands of calculations that benchmark not only each product within a given category against other products in the respective category, but also over time (since many of the variables account for content freshness and time decay).  Not only does it run this for each product on the site, but for each variable for each product which takes a significant computing power to calculate.

Over the past several years not only has the algorithm become more complex, but simultaneously we have seen tons more products get listed on the site along with substantial growth in the content and data that the algorithm analyzes (ie. reviews, partner recommendations, integrations, etc).

As the HotelTechReport platform and data set has grown, computing the HT Score has become significantly more resource intensive to the point where it has begun impacting application performance.  

In order to increase app performance for Premium Members and site speed for hoteliers-- beginning on July 19, 2023 HotelTechReport will stop calculating an HTScore for products that do not have a trustworthy profile (aka. < than 25 cumulative all-time reviews) as a way to reduce the computational capacity required to run the HT Score.  Products without a trustworthy profile don't have sufficient feedback on the platform for the algorithm to effectively rank them so this was a natural fit to reduce the scope of the dataset that the HT Score analyzes.  

After the update goes live, any product with <25 reviews will show "unranked" on their profiles and default sort after ranked vendors by # of reviews across the site.  As soon as vendors achieve 25 reviews, they will receive a rank within 24-hours.

• Before: All products on the site were factored into the HT Score algorithm and received an HT Score
• After: Only products with a trustworthy profile (>25 reviews) will be factored into the HT Score algorithm.  Prior to a product obtaining 25-reviews, it will be marked on the site as 'unranked' and will not earn an HT Score

How does this improve the experience for hoteliers?

The purpose of this update is to help improve application performance and site speed as well as help hoteliers avoid viewing products as ranked that realistically don't have a trustworthy profile or sufficient data to be ranked effectively by the algorithm.  Products that don't have a trustworthy profile with at least 25-reviews will be clearly marked as 'unranked' so buyers know that there is not sufficient feedback to rank the product based on user feedback from hoteliers in the community.

How will this impact your company?

1. This will only impact companies who aren't engaged on Hotel Tech Report and who don't meet the minimum trustworthiness criteria on their profile
2. When the update goes live on July 19th, products with fewer than 25 reviews may notice a significant change in rank due to the algorithm removing their HT Score
3. Products without trustworthy profiles and who don't meet the minimum review volumes to earn an HT Score (<25 reviews) will not be ranked and this will show on their profiles and index pages as 'Not yet ranked'

How can I prevent any negative impact?

Just make sure you don't have any products with fewer than 25 verified reviews on the platform to make sure all of your product profiles are above the trustworthy profile threshold.  

Need help collecting reviews quickly? 

• Basic Members...check out our free guides.
• Premium Members...run an automated campaign

Several companies in the HTR community have pointed out the frustration that comes with having to list integrations at the product level which is time consuming, difficult to manage and creates lots of duplicative work.  We've taken your feedback and refactored the way integrations work on the site.

What's New:

• Company-level integrations. Integrations have been refactored from product<>product to company<>company
• Data migration. All historical integrations have been migrated
• Easier management. Simpler management of single company<>company integrations.  Now companies only need to verify that they have an integration with another company (instead of verifying each integration from each of your products to each of your partners' products)
• Rankings impact. The HT Score has been refactored to look at company-level verified integrations (instead of product level)
• Verification flow and favorites.  New 2-way verification modal that allows each company to manage (a) which products of their integrate (b) share what you love about the partner's product/s (c) favorite the apps that pair best with yours 
• Redesigned Profile Component.  Full redesign of the integrations component on basic and premium profiles 
• Redesigned Partner Marketplaces.  Your partner marketplaces have gotten a full redesign to help you showcase the top apps that pair best with your solution.

Added Perks for Premium Members: 

• Boosted visibility on the redesigned integration component on profiles (sorted first by Premium then by review count)
• Boosted visibility on the partner marketplace pages (sorted first by Premium then by review count)